quinta-feira, 24 de janeiro de 2019

The 2016 Vintage Port comprehensive list, the producer's and their notes.

The 4th classic vintage Port of this century, 5 year after the extraordinary 2011 vintage ports, and after all the doubts and indecisions among winemakers and producers regarding a possible 2015 vintage declaration, which nevertheless was a year with very good conditions to produce vintage Port, we now have the 2016 vintage declaration.

It was the result of a very difficult, demanding and challenging wine year for winegrowers, in which their experience and knowledge of the vineyards was absolutely fundamental to the critical decision of the right moment to harvest.

To understand these wines (and in fact all wines) it is necessary to know all the peculiarities of the wine year that originated them. see more information: the douro 2016 harvest report

Despite the number of the 2016 vintages declared, that we haverecorded sofar (91), however, it seems clear that, also taking into account the 2015 vintage Port declaration and although we are always within the scope of a classic generalized and comprehensive declaration, considering the number of producers who declared the 2016 vintage with their mains brands and the indisputable extraordinary quality of these wines, there were also important exceptions, houses that took the option of not declaring 2016 (such as Ramos Pinto) thus assuming the 2015 declaration preference, and others that reserved their main brands for the 2015 declaration (such as Niepoort and Alves de Sousa), facts that did not occur in the 2011 classic vintage declaration.

In 2016, the quantity of vintage Port produced was lower, a consequence of the wine year characteristics, but also the commercial strategy of the main reputed companies to progressively value this special Port wine category, with the consequent price increase. This trend began to be noticed with the 2011 vintage Ports and after almost a quarter of a century (since the end of the 1980's) in which demand had slowed.